Overcoming Anxiety

Dannah Gresh: On today’s episode of Revive Our Hearts Weekend . . . 

Nancy DeMoss Wolgemuth:You know, we tend to think, If the things outside of me, if the external circumstances in my life would change, if just this would happen, then I wouldn’t feel so much in turmoil inside.

Janet Mylin: I realized when I was in anxiety I was creating losses that had never happened.

Connie Douglas: I went to the Lord and I said, “Lord, how can I walk through this? It’s very hard!”

Dannah: Welcome to Revive Our Hearts Weekend. Thanks for joining me. I’m Dannah Gresh.

This month’s theme at Revive Our Hearts is “Overcomers.” We want to help you to be an overcomer. Jesus wants you to be an overcomer!

A few weeks ago on this program we looked at overcoming selfishness. Last weekend we explored overcoming distractions. Today we’ll talk about overcoming anxiety. 

If you’re struggling with anxiety or stress, you’re not alone. About 30% of people say that they’re facing some kind of a chronic battle with anxiety—maybe panic attacks, or maybe they’re obsessive compulsive to some degree, or maybe they are experiencing some really lethal and painful post-traumatic stress disorder symptoms.

In the workplace people are stressed out. About 40% of people say that they have high anxiety at work. Probably most alarming was reading that 50% or more of college students go to professional counselors to seek help for their anxiety issues. And I think something that is so sad for me is that women are twice as likely as men to struggle. 

Today we’re going to hear from Nancy DeMoss Wolgemuth and King David in Psalm 131, about how to have a quiet heart. Mark and Connie Douglas have had ample opportunity to practice calming their anxious thoughts. We’ll hear from them, too. 

First up is my friend Janet Mylin. She’s a member of the creative team that first brought True Girl to life back in 2003. She’s been a lead teacher on the True Girl Tour and authored some books for the brand, including the very popular One-Year Mother/Daughter Devos.

Lately, Janet has been executing the production of our latest touring event for tween girls and their moms debuting next month: The Crazy Hair Tour. It teaches girls to be courageous and stand for truth in a culture that will think they’re crazy for doing it. Standing for truth can cause a lot of anxiety these days. Janet is no stranger to anxiety. Not too long ago she joined me in the studio to talk about ways to overcome it. Here’s a portion of that conversation.

Dannah: One of the choices that I love that you made is that you turned to the Word of God, and you began to ask, “What does God say about my anxiety?”

Some of the stuff you found was really groundbreaking in terms of me understanding my moments of anxiety. What did you discover in God’s Word?

Janet: Well, as I just stated a little bit, I just kept seeing in the Word things like, “Do not worry. Do not be anxious.” Philippians 4 and Luke 12 and in Matthew, there’s various places where it says, “Don’t do that. Don’t be anxious about anything.”

And that’s confusing sometimes because when you wake up in the middle of the night in a panic attack, it feels like, “How do I not do that?” So that led me to start researching into what choices I have in regard to anxiety because The Ten Commandments, “Do not murder; do not lie,” those are easier ones to say, “Okay, I can NOT do that. But ‘do not be anxious’? Um, I think I’m just going to hold on to that one because it’s impossible.” (laughter)

Dannah: Right, and we believe, “I can’t control it.”

Janet: Right. While there’s some aspects of it that appear to be out of my control, the choices I make in the midst of it help me regain control over my thoughts and my mind.

Dannah: He’s filled Scripture with imperatives: “Don’t do this. Don’t give in to the anxiety. Don’t give in to the fear.”

Janet: Right. I’ve definitely learned that fear is there. There are some things you do in spite of your fear, and some fear can save our lives. Those are good things. 

Dannah: Yes. Right. Like running from a bear—that’s good.

Janet: (laughter) That’s good fear—run from the bear.

Dannah: Yes.

Janet: But with anxiety . . . One night I was just sitting there, and I remember so clearly I felt this overwhelming anxiety coming towards me in the midst of having just lost mom. I just realized that I was at a crossroad where I could choose to hurl into the pit or not—knowing God’s love for me would be there no matter what my choice was. But I knew in that moment I had to do hard work so I wouldn’t go into the pit again, because I was not willing to let myself do that.

So then a big part of it, for me, is when I was researching just the concept of anxiety . . . I’d just been through a tremendous season of grief, which was just loss after loss, and having to grab onto the reality of how life actually was. That’s what grieving was. “Well, my mom is gone. This is my new reality. I need to understand that and move forward. And my friend committed suicide. I have to know that and move forward.”

I realized when I was in anxiety, I was creating losses that had never happened and was forcing myself to grieve over them

Dannah: Explain that.

Janet: Well, for instance: When I found out my dad had a heart attack, I was getting ready to go on stage to lead worship at a local event. He left me a voicemail. “I had a heart attack.” It sounds comical to say it that way, but just to set the stage: He told me he’d had a heart attack and was going in for tests.

So, clearly, he was doing okay if he was able to have a conversation. But my temptation was to immediately go to, “My dad is dying.” There was no indication of that, but that was my temptation. So, anxiety was saying, “Your dad’s dying. You need to grieve that loss now.” But that wasn’t the truth.

So when I realized that I was trying to force myself to grieve over a loss that had not happened, I went to my friend who was beside me. She spoke truth to me. “Your dad is exactly where he needs to be. He’s doing okay. He’s getting treatment.” And I was, like, “Okay.”

Dannah: Those things are true.

Janet: Right. And that made me think about, actually, oddly enough, manna in the Bible. I always refer to it as “Holy Bisquick” because apparently they did all kinds of things with it. They fried it. They put it into patties. I imagine they did Snickers bars and deep-fried them. I don’t know—all kinds of things.

It was so clear that they were to go out and gather manna for the day. Now, with the exception of the day before the Sabbath, they gathered enough for two days and didn’t have to work on the Sabbath. And if they did gather more than they needed for that day, the manna would rot. It wasn’t like, “Um,can we eat this turkey or not?”—that kind of rot. It was, like, worms.

Dannah: Salmonella.

Janet: Yes. Really bad. So it occurred to me then. I thought about in Lamentations where it talks about, “Great is His faithfulness. His mercies are new every morning.” And it occurred to me that I have enough mercy (enough manna), enough grace for this day. There’s enough dew on the grass for this day.

Those are the things I would speak out loud over myself—and I still do sometimes. When I’m tempted to give in to anxiety, I say, “I have enough grace and mercy for this moment, this day, this task. This is what I’m equipped for. And if this thing I imagine might happen happens tomorrow, then I will have enough grace to deal with it that day, that moment, that task.”

I realized I was trying to collect manna for days that hadn’t even happened yet.

Dannah: A helpful reminder from Janet Mylin. There are a lot of dynamics at play in anxiety. Professional counseling might be needed. Even, at times, medication might be helpful. But one essential ingredient in overcoming anxiety is that we need to speak the truth—God’s truth—to ourselves.

Mark and Connie Douglas learned that in a time of intense testing. And God used Nancy DeMoss Wolgemuth as part of that learning. Connie had a surprising diagnosis. She was getting checked out after a car crash, when the doctors told her she had cirrhosis of the liver. That surprised her, because, as she put it . . .

Connie: . . . that's what alcoholics got. 

A small number of liver patients who have cirrhosis have a genetic/autoimmune factor. That was probably why the disease was present in my body.

Dannah: Connie’s need for a liver was extremely serious. But the cirrhosis of the liver also developed into a secondary problem.

Connie: Portopulmonary hypertension. 

I went in every seven to ten days to be drained of fluid because I was so swollen.

Mark Douglas: There were two to three liters of fluid drained every ten days.

Connie: I could not walk without assistance. I was very, very weak.

Mark: She started losing weight. She was wasting away, even though she was swelling up. 

Connie: I just was too weak to do anything. 

Mark: And so, it was emotionally terrible to see. But we had a peaceful confidence that it can only be explained by God.

Connie: I went to the Lord, and I went to the Lord, and I said, “Lord, it's irrelevant why I have this. It doesn't matter. What does matter to me is how do You want me to walk through this? How can I walk through this? It's hard. It's very hard.” 

And He actually gave me the twenty-third Psalm, which is a very well-known psalm. Usually you hear it at funerals, but to me it was a roadmap of how to follow Jesus through life—all ways would lead you for His righteousness’ sake. And He would always lead you to when you need refreshment to still waters, to nourishing grainfields the—Word of God. He would protect you; He would sustain you. And when you walk through the valley of the shadow of death, you didn't have to be afraid. You knew you were secure in Christ. His presence was tremendous during that time . . . and still is.

Dannah: One of the hardest parts of walking through this illness for Connie was watching her son grow up and not being able to engage with his new family the way she would have liked.

Connie: That's where your heart aches the most. Yeah, your child is a grown up, but he's still my boy, and he had given us the granddaughter. So of course, your heart as a mom, as a grandmother . . . You don't want them to worry about you. You don't want them to suffer because you're suffering. You want to be around, he wants you to be around for all those . . . 

Actually, I was very sick when he got married. But the grace of God gave me energy. I planned his whole wedding. We had it at our favorite spot at the beach. It was just lovely. And God graced me with that time and. Then the baby is born. And I'm just beyond, it's the best experience I've ever had. Being a grandmother, I'm so grateful for it. But yes, with my illness, there's where the grave comes in. Sometimes I would be frustrated because I couldn't engage with them like I wanted to, or with Ellie Rose like I wanted to.

Nancy (on air): I'll tell you what, if you feel that you have to understand and make sense of everything that's going on in your life, you will drive yourself crazy trying. 

Mark: Of course, the pandemic hits, I went home from work to work from home in March of 2020. Sometime shortly thereafter, actually, it was one of Nancy’s podcasts.

Nancy (on air): Listen, if God is with you, if He's around you, if He's your fortress, if you have His presence in your life, you don't have to understand everything. You can be still. 

Mark: This was Psalms 131.

Nancy (on air): This passage has been a life preserver for me.

Mark: I heard some of that because I was home. It really struck me that no matter how smart I am, or how much research I do, or how many people I talk to, it's way too big for me. I won't figure it out.

Nancy (on air): You will never see or understand all the purposes that God has for what He does in your life.

You will never see all the purposes God has for what He does in your life.

Connie: She talked about being like a child weaned, 

Nancy (on air): Surely, I have behaved and quieted myself as a child that is weaned off his mother. My soul is even as a weaned child.

Connie: That parent will take care of everything, whatever you need, the parents got it. I think that image was very real to me, many, many times, many, many times.

Mark: I needed to be like that little, little baby, trusting God and leaning my head on God's shoulder, and just trusting.

Nancy (on air): I don't know what you may be facing today, or something that you're not even aware of that you'll be facing in the days ahead.

Dannah: Connie remembers being drained of energy, unable to get out of her chair, when a series aired on Revive Our Hearts. It was called “A Mighty Fortress Is Our God.”

Nancy (on air): But my prayer is that God will use Psalm 46 to stabilize your heart and to give you His perspective on the storm that you may be facing.

Connie: During that critical time, I listened to that whole series and rejoiced in the Lord. It just built my faith so much. It cheered me on in the depths of very, very big unknowns. 

Nancy (on air): Let me encourage you to sing while you're in the storm—before you even experience His deliverance or can imagine where it's going to come from.

Connie: Oh, it just fortified me. It encouraged me. It built me up. In fact, when I meet Nancy, I'm probably going to just burst into tears, because it helped so much. I don't know how to express how grateful I was, and I am, for that time period. I listened to it more than once

Nancy (on air): God said, “I will be exalted. When you sing, you say, ‘Amen’—I believe that's true.”

Connie: Singing is a very important thing. Singing to God when you're suffering, crying out to God and worshiping God and abiding, just abiding, and hiding in His shelter. That's where you've got to go.

Dannah: Well, they are Mark and Connie Douglas, good friends of Revive Our Hearts. It’s encouraging to hear that we’re not alone in the fight against our fears and anxious thoughts. 

God’s Word truly is truly powerful for fighting our anxieties. You and I need to get better at, as Nancy puts it, “counseling our own souls” with Scripture. 

I spent the better part of 2022 using Scripture to counsel my soul. You see, I suddenly faced a severe battle with anxiety following an illness that disrupted my ability to fall and stay asleep. I would awake suddenly and fearfully. The fear lasted a long time each night, until I started to fight it with the Words of God. I began counseling my heart with truth of God. When I did that, the battle didn’t end but I fell back to sleep within minutes!

Mark Douglas mentioned listening to a series Nancy taught on Psalm 131. In fact, let me read that psalm to you, and then we’ll hear some comments from Nancy about verse two. The whole psalm is only 3 verses. It’s a Psalm of David. He wrote,

O Lord, my heart is not lifted up;
my eyes are not raised too high;
I do not occupy myself with things
too great and too marvelous for me.
But I have calmed and quieted my soul,
like a weaned child with its mother;
like a weaned child is my soul within me.
O Israel, hope in the Lord
from this time forth and forevermore.

Here’s Nancy DeMoss Wolgemuth, talking about one key to overcoming anxiety, and that’s calming and quieting ourselves like weaned children.

Nancy: How to have a quiet heart. The Psalmist says, “I have quieted myself.” And that is so often what we need in this very busy, frantic, hectic world that we live in. How do you get a quiet heart?

I see in this verse that to have a quiet heart requires a conscious choice. It doesn’t just happen. He says, “Surely I have behaved and quieted myself.” I’ve made a decision. I’ve been proactive about this. I have spoken to my heart. That’s where we need to learn to counsel our hearts, to say, “Heart, be quiet.” It’s a conscious choice. “Surely,” he says. It’s like he’s taking an oath. One writer on this psalm said, “He is bound and determined to wrestle down his unruly soul.” And I like that, because sometimes my soul really gets unruly.

Now, one thing I’m learning, and I’m seeing it in this psalm, is that you have to quiet your own soul. No one else can do it for you. We tend to want somebody else to come around us and fix it or help it or make it better. People can encourage us; they can point us to the Lord. But ultimately we have to say to our own souls, “Soul, be quiet. Be still. Wait on the Lord.” This quietness is something that takes place within our hearts.

You know, we tend to think, If the things outside of me, the external circumstances in my life would change—if my husband would just whatever, or if I just had a husband, or if my children would just . . . or if our house were just in a different place, or if it were a different size, or if my job were just this, or if my boss were just this, or if just this would happen—then I wouldn’t feel so much in turmoil inside. But you know what? The storm really is within our own hearts. “Surely I have behaved and quieted myself.”

It’s a change that has to take place within, because I’ve learned that you can change all kinds of circumstances in life but your heart still be in turmoil. And you can have all kinds of turmoil going on around you and still have a quiet heart, because peace is a matter of what goes on inside the heart.

So I’m finding that what I have to do to my own heart is say, “Be quiet! Hush!” Now, we tend to think sometimes that we don’t have any control over our own heart, that we can’t help how we feel. We can’t help the way we’re feeling or thinking.

There’s a book that has been such a blessing to me over the years, and I’ve read it at different seasons in my spiritual pilgrimage. I’m reading it again because I need it again. It’s by an old-time writer named Francois Fenelon. It’s called The Seeking Heart. It’s one of my very favorite devotional books. The devotions are all just one or two or three pages, and you can read it in small doses.

One of the things that Fenelon says in this book about this matter of not being able to control our thoughts is:

Ask God for calmness and inner rest. I know what you are thinking—that controlling your imagination does not depend on yourself. Excuse me, please, but it depends very much on yourself! When you cut off all the restless and unprofitable thoughts that you can control, you will greatly reduce those thoughts which are involuntary. God will guard your imagination if you do your part in not encouraging your wayward thoughts.

We have to kind of rein in our souls and take charge under the control of the Holy Spirit and say, “Soul, be still. Mind, be still.” Don’t let your mind go there. “I will not exercise myself in things too high or things that are too great for me.” He says, “I have behaved and quieted myself as a child that is weaned of his mother. My soul is even as a weaned child.”

You think about a nursing infant that’s dependent on its mother’s milk, its mother’s breast. But there comes a point, as that baby grows and matures, that it needs to be weaned from the mother. But as you know if you’ve weaned a child, weaning is a process. It doesn’t happen overnight. It’s not always easy, and at points it involves a struggle.

“I can’t live without this! I need my mother’s milk; I need the mother’s breast!” So that child in the weaning process may whimper and cry; something is being taken away that it thinks it can’t live without. The child that has not been weaned or the child that’s in the weaning process at times can be demanding. It has to be its way. You know, it’s inherent in infants—and in grownups who think like infants—to be wired to think, I want, and I want now and not to be satisfied until you give them exactly what it wants.

But once the child has been weaned, the picture is that it’s content. The child is content with whatever the mother provides. The child is settled. The child trusts that the mother will give what the child needs.

Now, it’s not just infants that have to be weaned. We have to be weaned, too—grownups, children of God, believers. As we grow spiritually, God begins to wean us from things that we think we can’t live without: things, comfort, the longing for life to “work.” That’s a childish instinct, to say, “Life has to work the way I want it to work, and now.”

God has to wean us and bring us to the place where we can live without those things we were dependent on as spiritual children.

Dannah: That’s Nancy DeMoss Wolgemuth, sharing some thoughts on Psalm 131:2. You can hear the entire series when you go to ReviveOurHearts.com/weekend and click on this episode. It’s called “Overcoming Anxiety.”

Speaking of overcoming, that’s the concept Jesus gave to several of the churches He addressed in the opening chapters of the book of Revelation. Nancy is teaching on that in coming weeks on our daily radio program and podcast, Revive Our Hearts. 

This month, as a thank you for your donation of any amount, we’ll send you the booklet Overcomers: Lessons from the Churches of Revelation. Think of it as an application guide you can use as you read through the first several chapters of Revelation. It’s a way to personalize those letters from Jesus.

You can give a gift by calling 1-800-569-5959, or go to ReviveOurHearts.com/weekend and click on today’s episode. 

Today, we heard about overcoming anxiety. Next week, overcoming bitterness. I hope you’ll join us for that. Thanks for listening today. I’m Dannah Gresh, inviting you back, for Revive Our Hearts Weekend.

Revive Our Hearts Weekend is calling you to freedom, fullness, and fruitfulness in Christ.